A Whole New World
by LimeWater
Summary: A.U. What if Kennedy had declined the Final Fight, and realised her Potential on her own. Just something I'm playing with. It's been a LONG time. R&R Please!
1. Chapter 1

A.N. Well I used to write for this site back in 2006, taken a six year Sabbatical, hope you don't mind. My Fiancee said that seeing as I'm turning 23 soon that I should probably focus more on my passions, like writing, so here you go. Please read and Review as I want to gauge the audience reaction, it helps me to know I'm on the right track, or not. So help me out, yeah?  
_

The water cascaded off her body in waves. The heat was scalding, turning her skin from bronze into rubies, the steam clearing her throat of the London traffic smog. She watched as the blood of the two innocents she had saved swirled down the plug hole, washing away the nights events thus far. She couldn't remember the last time she had felt so alive. Her previous Watchers had told her of the true fight. The one between Slayer and Vampire. It was so much better than they had described, than she had ever felt taking the head off a practice target.

She thought about her destiny, as she lathered soap over her muscles, she had heard the stories a thousand times. She had, after all, been the one the Council was expecting to be next in line. Well the council was gone, along with her last Watcher, Emily. A fine example of the female physique. The Potential in her blood had bloomed, she had declined an offer to travel to America in the wake of an epic battle, because Emily had begged her to stay with her, if only she had begged her to stay away from the Council Offices that morning.

No, she shook the memory from her head, causing shampoo to sting her eyes. She convinced herself that the tears that followed were a result of that, though the aching in her heart, and the bile in her throat proclaimed otherwise. She was ashamed to admit that she, Kennedy Eleanor Prescott, had been in love. Was still in love, despite the fact that her lover was nothing but ash and bone under a pile of rubble. It went against everything she had ever believed in, love was for other people, she had always had such focus and drive when it came to her training, that all those couples sat on picnic blankets in Covent Gardens had seemed so idiotic.

She rinsed the soap from her body and the shampoo from her hair and stepped out of the shower. Her pain, she tried to tell herself, washed down the drain with the suds. She wrapped a towel around her hair and wiped the condensation from the mirror. The brown puffy eyes she saw staring back at her were quite unnerving. She never cried. When her Mother had died, she had told herself 'That's Life', just like her Father. When her Father remarried to the worst possible kind of woman, she kept the same motto. When said woman birthed the most vile of infants, she had maintained her mantra. And when the time came to leave, in a fight over her sexuality that had hospitalised her for three tedious days, she picked herself up and carried on. She was a survivor, down to the last fiber of her being. So why on earth was she crying now, over a woman she had known but six months?

She toweled off her brunette locks and walked, totally naked into her bedroom, a modest flat, to say that her Father was one of the wealthiest lawyers in London city. However, when you kill mythical creatures for a living, and Daddy has well and truly cut you off, you can't afford to be picky... Literally. She looked at her bed, unslept in, and tried to ignore the dull ache that started in her heart every time she saw Emily's side of the bed. She needed to get over this. She would hunt every night, and train every day, until her mind was as focused on her Slayer destiny as it was the day before she had set eyes on that stunning bookworm she had come to call her own.

The night was young, she had only gone home to shower and change because walking around London at night, covered in blood, wasn't really accepted in the big city, despite the fact that hardly anyone ever really saw you. She looked at the clothes she had taken off and grimaced, there was no repairing the jeans, they were beyond hope. She dressed in a fresh pair and pulled on a black t-shirt before sponging down her leather jacket in the bathroom. This time when she looked in the mirror, she saw the hard faced bitch she was used to seeing, the one whose jaw was set, whose eyes gleamed with the prospect of a fight, the one she hadn't seen for a while.

She half-smiled to herself, she could do this, she would do this. She flexed her muscles and donned a back scabbard, slotting her samurai sword into it, before jamming her arms into the leather jacket. It had been a gift from Emily, and she would not get rid of it, though her muscles were expanding with Slayer Strength by the day, and it wouldn't fit much longer.

She walked through the flat to the front door and went through it. Once more ignoring the eviction notice pinned to the front of it, that would have to wait, right now, she wanted to kill something...


	2. Chapter 2

Living in Kensal Green was becoming a little boring to say the least. Kennedy stalked the grounds between Kensal Green Cemetery and St. Mary's Cemetery regularly with little fruition. Occasionally she would stumble upon a new grave to keep an eye on, but usually she just ended up staring at moldy gravestones, wondering what she was doing with her life. She had been patrolling every night for a year, and until tonight, never come across the kind of creature she was looking for. She had stopped muggings, rapes and murders, but she had only ever killed one vampire. Proof they did exist she supposed. She had been starting to doubt it.

She had heard rumors that Hellmouthes were opening up all over the world, due to the number of Potential Slayers now being realised, but she had not yet heard of any close by that might provide her with a welcoming change. Her contact with all things Slayer lost in the rubble that was once the Watchers Council. Her fists tightened in her pockets as she thought of what else was lost in the rubble, but she walked on regardless.

She was beginning to think that her fight mechanism was to be wasted, once again, on her punch bag, when she heard a whimper from her right, down the alley behind the Flying Elephant. She crouched low, sneaking in the shadows, her senses on full alert.

"No... Please..." A strangled whisper from a slim blonde girl, currently in the clutches of a male with a bad case of 'lumpy forehead syndrome' he had his head buried in her neck, her eyes looked at Kennedy, piercing and terrified, and Kennedy pulled her samurai sword out of its scabbard and walked over to the vamp, casually tapping him on the shoulder.

"Did anyone ever tell you that eating late at night can give you nightmares?" She asked, smiling as the vamp tore himself away from the blonde, attempting to throw himself towards Kennedy.  
"I am the nightmares darling." He snarled, plasma dripping from his fangs.  
"We'll see who the nightmare is." She winked at him, kicking his feet from under him. He landed on the concrete with a dull thud. Two in one night, she thought, none for a year, and then two in one night. Somethings a little screwy about that. While she was thinking, the vamp kicked her left kneecap, she felt something crack and her leg buckled, causing her to kneel.  
"That's right bitch, on your knees." He smiled, pushing himself up off the ground in one swift move. Kennedy ignored the searing pain in her leg, it would heal soon enough, she too righted herself and ran her blade through the vampires heart. She knew it wouldn't kill him, but it'd hurt like hell. He cried out with rage, spitting blood into her face. She recoiled, withdrawing her sword as he lunged at her.  
She hit him square in the face and added, "Guess no one ever taught you it's rude to spit either." before she sliced his head clean off his shoulders, causing dust to fill the air as the vamp disintegrated. Kennedy breathed in a little too soon and began to cough, the ash sticking to the back of her throat. She made a mental note to let dust settle before breathing in future.

After a few minutes, she had managed to compose herself. The burning in her throat under control, and the pain in her knee fading fast. She looked over to the blonde girl, bleeding from her jugular and raised an eyebrow, "Well that was a hell of a thing." She brushed the dust from her leather jacket and knelt down beside the girl.  
"Kill me." The blonde girl whimpered. "I don't want to be one of them."  
"Well unless he fed you his blood kidda, you're gonna be just fine, he doesn't seem like the siring type. Too much responsibility." She stifled her laugh when she saw the fear in the girls eyes. "What's your name Blondie?"  
"Uh... Aiyanna, my name's Aiyanna." The girl looked at the blood on her hands, "I feel faint."

Kennedy stopped her from hitting her head on the concrete as she fainted. She mentally tried to assess if it was due to lack of blood, or the sight of blood, and decided that she would take her back to her flat, rather than have all the questions at the hospital. She carried her with ease and silence the few blocks to her humble abode. No one paid much attention to her carrying a bleeding blonde girl through the streets of London, face covered in blood and spit. This city was strange, and it didn't feel like home. She had lived here for two years, one with her family, and one in her flat, and she missed the outer-city town where she had grown up.

She quickly ascended the four flights of stairs to her second-storey living space. She turned her key in the lock, once again ignoring the notice nailed to the door, and deposited Aiyanna on her couch. She had never brought anyone but Emily back to this place. She had never needed or wanted to.

She pulled the half bottle of vodka from the fridge, and grabbed the kitchen roll from its holder. Kneeling silently beside the unconscious blonde, she began cleaning the wound on her neck. Even the sting didn't wake her. Even Kennedy applying a large amount of St. James' Balm to her neck and then covering it with a plaster didn't cause her to stir. The Slayer could hear her heart beating, fluttering, in the girl's chest. She was alive.

An hour later Kennedy was freshly washed and sat on the floor in front of the couch in shorts and t-shirt watching the 6am news. The stern looking news reporter reeling off details of a 'massive overnight slaying' in the Greater London area. 36 people had been found with 'animal bites' marring their corpses in varying states of disarray. Kennedy just sat staring at the screen, her brain trying to process the very real possibility that a Hellmouth had chosen to come to her.

The news reader finished her 'Breaking News' story, and a stout looking man started going through the weather forecast as the couch behind her began to shift. She turned around to see Aiyanna staring at her with a face full of terror.  
"Don't look at me like that Kidda, I ain't the bad guy." She shrugged, shifting so she could gauge the girls reaction.  
"W-What are you?" She looked so lost, like her whole world was suddenly different, "You just... Chopped a guys head off and turned him to dust!" She shoved herself into the corner of the couch, hugging her knees to her chest.  
"I'm Kennedy." She smiled, "And I saved you from a vampire. You're welcome."  
"No... I mean... Thank you and all... A vampire? Was it really a vampire?" She shook her head in disbelief, vampires were things from Grimm's Fairy Tales or something.  
"Yeah, a real life, walking dead, blood-sucking vampire." Kennedy shrugged again, "I'm a Slayer."

Emily had always told Kennedy that the Council required full confidentiality when it came to divulging information about Slayers, and vampires, and demons. But she figured the girl had a right to know, especially if all hell was about to break loose... Literally. Besides, the Council was no longer standing. She was on her own in every sense. It felt nice to speak to someone about it.

Aiyanna listened in fascination as Kennedy told her about vampires and demons. A whole world she never knew existed until tonight, and according to her heroine was only going to get worse if the local news was anything to go by.

"Where do you live?" Kennedy asked at about 9am. "I should get you home. Your parents will worry."  
"Uh... Yeah." Aiyanna grimaced inside, she hated her home, didn't hate her 'parents' but she knew she was an inconvenience to them at the very least. Foster kids were just a pay check, she had learned that from a young age. And it wasn't like her Mother would be coming back to claim her. She shook the thoughts from her mind, a month from now she would be a care leaver, and the thought of that kept her almost sane. "I live opposite Queen's Park." She finally answered.

Kennedy gave the blonde her number before leaving her to walk up to her front door. Her stomach was ravenous, but her pockets were decidedly empty. She trudged back to her flat, this time ripping the eviction notice from the door as she passed through it.

She took what remained of the vodka into the bedroom and practically threw it down her throat, before fumbling in her jacket for cigarettes. Two left. She had learned to be more resourceful when it came to smoking, her shortness of cash an ever present reminder of the life she used to live, only having one before going to sleep so as to calm herself. The craving during her waking hours was one of the things that kept her focused.

Smoke billowed from her mouth as she exhaled, her muscles beginning to relax as both alcohol and nicotine lulled her system into dizzying numbness. She dropped the cigarette into the ashtray on her bedside table and uncoiled herself like a Lynx in the sunshine.

As her head hit the pillow, she could never have predicted what she would dream about... And in the morning she would find herself wondering whether it was a dream, or a vision.


End file.
